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Organisation

Immunology

Research Group

Lifecycle:1 Jan 2019 →  Today
Organisation profile:The overarching basic research of our research unit fits in the faculty spearhead of inflammation and focusses on the activating and inhibitory mechanisms that govern basophil and mast cell degranulation, as witnessed by our 2 Senior Researcher Fellowships (FWO). Using functional flowcytometry we study how basophils and cultured human mast cells react upon various secretagogues and how this activation can be influenced. These studies are mainly performed in various allergies (medicines, food), mastocytosis and rheumatoid arthritis. With respect to the underlying pathomechanisms of food allergy we have an ongoing study in peanut allergy that is executed by an aspirant of FWO. Translational and clinical research is more discipline specific with different interfaces. Allergology and pediatric allergology studies mainly focus on the optimization of in vitro and in vivo diagnostics for complex allergies and exploration of the effects of allergen specific immunotherapy. Our main subjects of interest are allergies for drugs, food and cannabis sativa (IWT, DOCPRO, Horizon 2020). In these studies there is a close collaboration with dermatology. With respect to auto-inflammatory conditions we have a stufy on FMF (IWT). Reasearch in rheumatology focusses on the effect of biologicals on various immunocompetent cells. Both our fundamental and translational/clinical research can be considered as "niche" research quite unique in Belgium and is highly appreciated internationally.
Keywords:BASOPHILS, ALLERGY, RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS
Disciplines:Diagnostics, Immunology, Laboratory medicine, Molecular and cell biology, Public health care, Public health sciences, Other translational sciences